Comments on: Why Does Sand Become Such A Detritus Trap?

By: Denver Eligio

Denver Eligio — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 16:38:09 +0000

thanks for the great post!

By: John

John — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 14:48:38 +0000

Thanks for your kind comments and it’s always good to know the texts are useful..

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By: John

John — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 11:34:24 +0000

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By: administrative assistant

administrative assistant — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 19:04:03 +0000

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By: veterinary medicine

veterinary medicine — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 14:52:37 +0000

nice post. thanks.

By: John

John — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:46:06 +0000

Thanks for that Carl.
Peter had a lot of trouble in the tank he was caring for and eventually took over. The sand was really full of rubbish, and at the end he removed most of it and cleaned up the rest by stirring. Sand vacuum cleaners as you say are a good help though if the sands is fine there is a danger that it will be sucked up uncontrollably.

By: Carl Strohmeyer

Carl Strohmeyer — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 20:32:26 +0000

I encountered this problem in my many years in Aquarium maintenance and design. I would have a customer call me out to check as why this is a persistant problem, however there area couple of simple solutions of which I prefer both.

(1) The first is to keep a layer of #3 crushed coral that is about ½ inches thick on top of the much deeper layer of #00 fine sand. This works well to trap detritus that is then more easily vacuumed or broken down biologically

(2) I also like to use re-circulating micron vacuums such as the Aquarium Cleaning Machine (http://americanaquariumproducts.com/CleaningMachine.html ) which can be run much longer after changing out water so as to remove ALL organic mulm that adds to this detritus layer.

For more of these ideas I would suggest this article about Marine Aquarium Basics and resources for further information:
http://americanaquariumproducts.com/Basic_Saltwater.html